To:S. I. GUSEV[1]

Written:Written on September 16, 1919Published:First published inPravdaNo. 63, March 5, 1933.

      Printed from the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1976],

      Moscow,Volume 35,

      pages420-421.Translated:Andrew RothsteinTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

ComradeGusev,

Thinkingover the letter from Sklyansky (about the
situation on September 15) and the sum total of the operations
reports, I am becoming convinced that our Revolutionary
Military Council of the Republic is working badly.

Tokeep on with reassuring reports is bad tactics. It
becomes “a game of reassurance”.

Butin reality, we have stagnation, almost collapse.

Atthe Siberian Front they have put some blackguard
Olderogge and the old woman Pozern in charge, and “
reassured themselves”. An absolute disgrace! And now we are
beginning to get beaten! We shall make the R.M.C.R.
responsible for this, ifenergeticsteps are not taken! To let
victory slip out of our hands is a disgrace.

Inactionagainst Mamontov. Evidently, there has been
one delay after another. The troops marching on Voronezh
from the North were late. We were late in transferring the
21st Division to the South. We were late with the armoured
cars. Late with communications. Whether it was the
Commander-in-Chief alone who visited Orel, or whether he went
with you, is all one: the job was not done. Communications
with Selivachov were not established, supervision of him
was not established, in spite of thelong-standinganddirectdemand of the Central Committee.

Asa result, inaction against Mamontov and inaction
with Selivachov (instead of the “victories” promised from
day to day in childish little drawings—do you rememberhow you showed me these little drawings, and how I said:
they’ve forgotten the enemy?!).

IfSelivachov deserts, or his divisional commanders
betray us, the guilty party will be the R.M.C.R., because
it slept, and sent us soothing messages, but didn’t do its
job. We must send the best,most energeticcommissars to
the South, not sleepy owls.

Wearc late, too, with new formations. We are letting
the autumn go by—and Denikin will triple his forces, get
tanks, etc., etc. This can’t go on. Thesleepytempo of
work must be made into alivelyone.

Reply(through Lydia Alexandrovna Fotiyeva).

September 16

Apparentlyour R.M.C.R. “gives orders”, without being
interested in or able to follow upfulfilment. This may be
our common vice, but in military affairs it simply means
destruction.

[1]Thisletter was written in response to Maxim Gorky’s appeal to the
All-Russia Commission for Improving Scientists’ Living Conditions,in which he mentioned certain cases when scientific workers had
been obliged to share too large a part of their flats with new tenants.
Gorky was then chairman of the Petrograd branch of the
Commission.